How to create a useful business website?
So, you want to create your own website?
It’s a very good idea! Regardless of whether you run a business or are a specialist in your industry, your own website is a good idea for several reasons.
- It gives more credibility for you and your business. If you are on the internet, you are more “real” than if you were not there, so mark your place in this space.
- This is the space that you control. Unlike profiles on social media, you decide how your page looks, what content it has, what you promote on it. Of course, you still have to obey international and local regulations and you set the website on someone else’s server (hosting), but the level of freedom you have on your site is incomparably greater than for example on facebook or LinkedIn.
- You create another point of contact for your potential customers and recipients. It can be your hub, a place where you collect all your activities, a place where anyone wants to know what’s going on with you, it comes to the site and knows.
- You will start building your media. If on your site you start to give valuable content and take care of their promotion and positioning, you start to build your position as an influencer.
- PR official source. Thanks to your website, you can publish official statements, share media materials, it can be a point on the Internet in which you communicate and verify the published information.
What do you need to create a good website?
- Start with an idea. Why do you want to create your website? What is her purpose? What will it be on her? What function will your site perform? What effect do you expect? Answering these questions, select 1 main function that your site should fulfill. One. You can add new functionalities later, but each page should have one main goal. What could be such a goal?
- Information (about you and the company, offer, information about the industry, events, news)
- Building an expert’s position (by creating content, recommendations)
- Building a list of contacts (obtaining leads, promoting free content)
- Sales (product, services, course)
- Well then? Which function is the most important for you today?
- The content is king! So what do you show on your website? At the beginning you can use stock photos but the sooner you start using the photo session created especially for you, the better. Let me know if you need great photoshoot. The next element is the content for your website. Write down on the piece of paper what information you want to include on your website (start with a one-page simple page), and then prepare the content for each of the information. A good idea is to work with a professional copyrighter. You can use the services such as fiverr, or contact us. Me and my team and I will help you with the preparation of your content.
- Sketch it on paper. It is a very good idea to first take a piece of paper and draw what should be where and how much space should take. The art of creating effective websites is constantly gaining experience. Trying, testing and correcting mistakes, so do not be surprised if your homepage at the beginning does not work or look the way you imagine. This guide shows you how to do it yourself, but you will avoid many mistakes and save a lot of time if you delegate this task to us;)
- Pick a name (domain). If you already have your business name, the most ideal would be to grab (yourBusinessName).com domain for yourself. But “.com” domains are the most popular so there is a great chance that your name is already taken. You can use any domain (and hosting) provider. Recently I used Ionos (previously 1and1) and I’m so far happy with speed and reliability of their service. If you do not have a name yet, it’s worth having an article about “How to create great brand name?“.
- Pick your hosting company. I intentionally do not suggest you the suggested hosting company here, because I think that the first page will be much faster and easier to build using the help of websites that offer hosting themselves. But if you want to set up your website yourself using the system, for example WordPress, then you will need hosting or buying a service on wordpress.com.
- Pick your CMS. On the Internet you will find a lot of mechanisms for building websites. I know and use 3 platforms. When building websites for our clients, we use the WordPress platform, each time installed on the client’s server. If I want to make a quick mockup or set a website quickly, I use the Weebly platform. And when building landing pages I use Landingi.com. Do some market research yourself if you want to compare specific services, I will focus on those that I know and I use ok?
How to create your own website on Weebly?
If you have never created your own website, than I think it’s the easiest platform to start with. So I’ll guide you through the most basic website creation process ok? Here we go!
- Create your account on weebly.com
- Now after you register with your Facebook/Google or email address, you pick the version without and on-line store (let’s start with bare minimum)
- Now let’s pick the first theme. It’s clean and nice looking (you can change your theme later)
- And now it’s just like editing your favourite docx document! You just click and edit all texts and pictures on this site. You can (and should) edit all texts and pictures to replace them with your own.
- You can (and should) replace the main background image.
- After you finish editing all texts and pictures on your site hit that “Publish” button, where you can choose to buy your new domain, or use subdomain .weebly.com. You can start with this one, and then update settings with your own domain later.
- That’s it! Congratulations! You’ve just created your very own website for free!
What’s next?
Even using tool as simple as weebly, there will be huge difference between self-made website and carefuly designed website created by professional team. But I wrote this article to show you, that if you have dreams, goals and you want to start, than you can start with no budget and still create those first steps building your own brand. If you need someone that can help you build your business or personal brand, let us know here: https://michaelbeast.com/contact/
Would you like to see more detailed video-tutorial of creating free website on weebly? Let me know in comments.
This series of articles includes:
- How to create a great brand name?
- How to create a great business logo?
- How to create a useful business website?
- How to create slick business cards & stuff?
- How to brand your business in social media?
So stay tuned as articles will be released weekly, to stay informed click here.
PS. I believe in you! You are awesome!